


After School Special

by tawg



Series: The Dangers of Dating a High School Principal [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Avenger Clint, Clint in a suit, M/M, Principal Coulson, Suit Porn, being a principal is hard.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2012-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-10 01:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint has a coffee date in mind, but Coulson has a school to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After School Special

It had been a long time since Clint had set foot inside a high school. The last time had been just before he’d run away to join the circus, and he’d been wearing hand-me-down clothes and sneakers that were so worn through that his socks soaked up every single puddle in winter. He’d been an easy kid to find – just follow the trail of muddy footprints.

Now he was wearing a suit. Black suit, black tie, black sunglasses. Clint only owned one suit, and it was for the single purpose of looking like a scary, faceless government agent. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He strode up to the high desk of the school secretary and glared down at her from behind his sunglasses.

“I’m Agent Barton with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division,” he said flatly. “And I’ll be seeing Principal Coulson now.”

The secretary floundered for a moment, before pulling herself together and reaching for a daily planner. “Did you have an appointment? Because it’s budget time and Phillip really can’t be disturbed unless it’s for absolute emergencies.”

“Ma’am,” Clint said in his toneless, secret agent voice. “If it weren’t an emergency, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I’ll, uh. If you just take a seat I’ll-” But Clint was already striding past the desk towards the plain door with the neat, plastic ‘Principal’s Office’ sign glued slightly off centre to the frosted window. The door was partly open when Clint reached it, and he shut it once he stepped inside. 

“We meet again,” Principal Coulson said without looking up from the sheets of paper spread over his desk. He had one hand poised over a calculator and the other held a four-colour pen. The red tip was extended, and working its way down a column of numbers. “Take a seat.”

Clint sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. Despite the secret agent suit, and wearing sunglasses indoors, and the cool confidence of a trained assassin and superhero, he felt nervous. A lot of it had to do with the childhood conditioning associated with being called into the principal’s office. A little bit was due to the fact that it had been three weeks since the museum incident and it was the first time Clint and Coulson had managed to be in the same place since then.

“Phillip,” he started.

“Call me Phil,” Coulson replied. “People only call me Phillip when I’m in trouble.”

“Sorry about getting put in quarantine,” Clint said as he took his sunglasses off and tucked them into his jacket pocket. Coulson had written his mobile number on the back of Clint’s hand when they’d parted at the museum so Clint could get patched up. The problem with getting covered in open wounds and enchanted sawdust was that it took a long time for the medicos to believe that he had no similar traces of taxidermy-related possession. That had been one week struck down. Then, as soon as he’d been cleared, there had been an incident in Ohio of all places that had required a lot of standing around and guarding mystical objects (and, seriously, how come Iron Man or the Cap never got stuck with those missions?). And then when Clint had finally gotten back from that, Principal Coulson’s mobile had been answered by the school secretary, because Phil had apparently been in meetings every single time that Clint had called. 

“Sorry I keep missing your calls,” Coulson replied in an absently harried voice. “Budget is coming up and our funding is going to get slashed _again_ and it’s just been-” He finally looked up at Clint, and trailed off. “You look good,” he said at last, and he put the pen down. Clint knew Phil just well enough to know that was a very high compliment.

“So do you,” Clint returned. Phil had his suit jacket off and slung over the back of his chair, and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up to his elbows. “If you have a moment to spare, that invitation to go for a coffee still stands.”

Phil considered the offer, his gaze trailing up and down the length of Clint’s tie in a most distracting manner. “I guess I can take a short break.”

“How short?” Clint asked.

Phil pulled his mobile phone out and tapped on the screen. “Twenty minutes,” he replied, and then gave Clint a stern look. “I’ve set an alarm. There’s a coffee pot in the teacher’s lounge.” 

Clint smiled back. “You sure know how to show a guy a good time.”

Phil stood up, and stretched a little. “For you, I’ll even break out the half and half.”

“Now you’re just spoiling me,” Clint replied. 

The halls of Crosstown High School were pretty much deserted. It was nearly five, school was over, and the teacher’s lounge was bereft of any teachers. Phil had a white mug with the Captain America shield emblazoned on it, which Clint thought was kind of cute, and handed Clint a black mug with “Go BullDogz” printed on the side. “School team?” he asked.

Phil stared at the mug with a mildly puzzled air. “No,” he said at last. “We’re the Snowmen.”

“Why the Snowmen?” Clint asked as they headed back towards Phil’s office.

“We used to be the Crosstown Tigers, but we let the kids vote on their mascot. It didn’t make a lot of sense having a Snowman representing a team called the Tigers, and there are that many local teams called the Tigers.”

“It sounds like a sensible decision then,” Clint said.

“The Snowman does have stripes,” Phil added, over the sound of feet pounding down the hallway. He turned and glared at the approaching gaggle of teenagers. “No running in the halls,” he said flatly.

“It’s Mister Hammond,” one kid panted.

“What about Mister Hammond?”

There was a scream, and then a strange noise that sounded too high pitched to be a roar, but too loud to be anything else. The kids scattered, but Phil had one scruffed by the back of her jumper. “He got bit!” the teen exclaimed. “Fucking Jesse bought this green hamster in and Mister Hammond was checking it over and it bit him.”

“Then what happened?” Phil asked, staring intently down the hallway the kids had fled from. The double doors at the end of the hallway burst open, and a creature that was half-man, half-hamster emerged from it, paused, and let out another one of those squeaking roars. Phil let go of the student and shoved her down the hall. The kid took the invitation and split.

Clint reached for the gun tucked neatly in his shoulder holster, but Coulson had a professional look of fury on his face as shoved his Captain America mug at Clint and stalked down the hallway. “What do you think you are doing?!” he demanded of the beast. The hamster-man roared at Principal Coulson, and started beating at a row of lockers, knocking doors from their hinges. Phil grabbed the man by his giant, hamster ear – and Clint desperately wished he had a gun in his hands because shit was getting real - and yelled, “Gregory, _this is school property!_ ” Gregory stopped, and blinked down at Coulson. Phil had his hands on his hips, glaring up in return, and the hamster actually shrank back a little.

“It’s over,” he said, in a voice that seemed to lisp around the vowels. Clint suspected that had something to do with the impressive buck teeth the guy was sporting. “Look at me! You save one critter from the dumpster and this is how life repays you. My teeth are shot to hell, I’m out of a job, I’m a freaking _hamster mutant_. And I really liked these shoes.”

“You’re not out of a job,” Phil said calmly. “Which means that you can buy new shoes. That’s two problems solved.”

“Of course I’m out of a job!” Gregory wailed. “Look at me! It’s budget time and we all know you’ll be giving someone the boot. And what parent wants a raging fluff-ball teaching their kids anyway?”

“A parent who expect teachers to quit causing a commotion,” Phil replied calmly, and the last of the hysteria seeped out of Gregory. “I am not firing anybody. I haven’t had to fire anyone to meet budget since I started here, and I’m not planning on doing so now.”

“You fired Irvine last year,” Gregory replied, almost sulkily.

“Irvine was selling meth to the students,” Phil replied. “And if you remain on staff we might even be able to get a grant from the Survivors of Nefarious Plans charity.”

Gregory blinked down at Coulson from dark, beady eyes. “You really think so?”

“Yes, Gregory. I definitely think so.”

Gregory hiccoughed, sniffled, and then launched himself at Phil, tackling him to the floor and wrapping his little hamster-man arms around Coulson’s middle. The guy was sobbing, and Phil let out a professional sigh, and patted him on top of his big, furry head.

“Take tomorrow off,” Phil advised. “Get yourself checked out. We’ll talk on Monday about any special needs you might have.”

“Oh god,” Gregory sobbed. “How am I going to get home? I can’t take the subway like this. And do you know how hard it is to get an appointment at a mutation-related clinic?”

“Uh,” Clint said from his position down the hallway. Gregory looked up at him, and Phil let his head flop right back, so that his view of Clint was upside down. “I may be able to help out on both of those counts.”

SHIELD did have a number of black vans at its disposal, and Clint was able to make a few calls regarding the mutagenesis screening. “What is it with science geeks and getting hit with something radioactive?” he asked as he and Coulson watched men in yellow biohazard suits remove the alpha-hamster from the physics classroom. It was definitely green, and definitely glowing. Clint had a feeling his evening suddenly involved hunting down its origin.

“It’s an occupational hazard,” Phil replied. “There are insurance plans now that cover for it.”

“Really? Huh.” And then the alarm on Coulson’s phone went off. Both men looked down at it with a sigh. “I guess you need to get back to work,” Clint said. 

“I really do. Now we need a bank of new lockers, too,” Phil replied. “Thank you for the distraction.” 

“On the bright side, we did manage to get some coffee.”

Phil had his tie in his hands – it had a significant volume of hamster-man snot on it – and absently wound it around one palm and then unwound it again. “Maybe next time we’ll actually get to _drink_ it.” 

“That’s what I love about you,” Clint returned. “You dream big. Here,” he tugged the tie from Phil’s hands. “Let me get this dry cleaned for you or something.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” Clint replied. “Returning it will give me an excuse to see you again.”

Phil had a small smile on his face, the barest twitch at the corners of his mouth. “Well,” he said, “if you think you need an excuse to see me.”

Clint leaned forwards, because to hell with it, Coulson had just talked down a freaked out physics teacher hamster mutant man thing, and Clint was the kind of guy who happened to find that talent incredibly attractive in a prospective partner. But then Gregory leaned on the horn of the black van in the parking lot, and Clint groaned. “Okay, okay. Fine. No making out in the halls,” he huffed.

“Maybe next time,” Coulson said in an offhand manner, but he had laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and Clint loved the playful edge hidden there.

Clint was definitely going to be walking those halls again as soon as physically possible.


End file.
